"At a meeting of the House of Commons' international trade committee earlier this month, Leon Benoit, the Conservative chairman, ordered me to stop my presentation as an invited witness. My remarks, he ruled, were not relevant. When his decision was successfully challenged by other members of the committee, Mr. Benoit adjourned the meeting and left the room.

"I was astonished. I had spent several days preparing for my presentation, and two days in transit. Later, I learned that Mr. Benoit's behaviour may have been prompted by a secret guidebook for Conservative chairmen, designed to interrupt witnesses challenging government positions."

"Fort McMurray, Alberta -- Huge mines here turning tarry sand into cash for Canada and oil for the United States are taking an unexpectedly high environmental toll, sucking water from rivers and natural gas from wells and producing large amounts of gases linked to global warming.

"The digging -- into an area the size of Maryland and Virginia combined -- has proliferated at gold-rush speed, spurred by high oil prices, new technology and an unquenched U.S. thirst for the fuel. The expansion has presented ecological problems that experts thought they would have decades to resolve....

"The river used to be blue. Now it's brown. Nobody can fish or drink from it. The air is bad. This has all happened so fast," said Elsie Fabian, 63, an elder in a native Indian community along the Athabasca River, a wide, meandering waterway once plied by fur traders. 'It's terrible. We're surrounded by the mines.'"

U.S. needs for oil, gas hurt Canada, report says
Canada is turning into "America's gas tank" by ramping up oil and gas development at a heavy environmental price to feed rapacious U.S. demand for fossil fuels, a report by two environmental groups charges.

At right is a graph of Canadian natural gas production from the perspective of the USA's Gas Research Institute. [Enlarged]

Canadian Gas Supply: Going Up? Or Down?
While Canada contains significant natural gas resources, ... There are clear trends suggesting that the gas market is moving from a supply/demand balance controlled by demand to one controlled by supply...."